Somewhere Between
by Minear
Summary: ON INDEFINITE HOLD. After betrayal, can you learn to trust again? Will you even want to? Can you even trust your comrades? When a war is about to happen, there's no time to think about it. You just have to trust, perhaps? Eventful Seiftis


**NOTE: **This is the first thing I ever published here in and it's completely, utterly unfinished. But you can still read it if you will, and leave a review while you're at it.While this story is on hold, I'm planning out the plotline on the side of my other fanfics. I hope to continue this story once I've gotten the plot straightened out. Hopefully it won't take too many years :)

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** S o m e w h e r e B e t w e e n **  
Written by Minear

CHAPTER 1  
Somewhere

One breath after another, the most recent desperate gasp for air felt always worse than the previous one. The mouldy smell of the heavy and dusty air was indescribable, but at the same time the smell of the air that she was forced to take into her grasping lungs didn't leave any room for a need to name that smell. The air reeked horribly, that was for sure, and every time that it passed through her tired-out lungs in the forms of her heavily grasping breaths, she felt her body slowly falling down to the deep slumber that she was desperately trying to avoid.

Only three hours ago she had slowly tried to move her legs and arms, both of them immobilized due to the fact that they were skilfully tided up with a thick strong rope, but she had then eventually stopped the struggling when the last ounce of energy was drained from her limbs, making them now totally numb, and for the time being, useless. Because of her useless struggling to get free, the rope had painfully dig against to her skin and left the awful and aching burning marks around her wrists. Through this time, she had already lost all of her energy, finding herself unable to do even a slightest movement and now just struggling to stay awake in this cold and dark room with the ambience of pain and loss of hope.

The sound of emptiness started echoing in her ears, her breaths and heartbeats silencing down when her eyes closed down, her whole body now just wanting to let go and forget the struggling that seemed so useless. The muffled voices of the men who were guarding her cell became suddenly louder in the other room, but she couldn't understand what they were saying, nor she had any will to do so as she was tired out from these countless hours that she had been forced to spend here without any kind of food or even a drop of water.

The dog chained to heavy metal chains behind the sturdy wooden door of her cell had been whining for a long time already as it was desperately trying to reach out to the dirty bowl of rotten food that was intentionally put only slightly away from the dog's reach in purpose of _'making fun'_, as one of the men had called it.

The whining kept on going, but instead of feeling annoyed she felt compassion towards the old dog with no eyesight left. She felt that they were both at the same situation: trying not to give up. But the hours were getting longer and longer to go by and she was ending up with a failure. Her last awareness was slowly drifting away when her eyelids closed down heavily, the sound of the dog's soft whining guiding her into the clutches of the slumber that had never relented its grasp over her. She heard the last heavy sound of the dog clanking his metal chains against the floor, almost like trying to tell her not to give up, before she became totally numb, her mind slowly silencing down. And for seconds, all she could hear was her slow heartbeat, followed up with a deep silence that took her mind over…

But then quite unexpectedly, the soothing silence of slumber was overthrown with sudden bangs and voices of metal that wiped every other voice away, including the whining of the blind dog left in starvation. She was dragged away from her blissful state of silence by those sudden noises, and the slumber was suddenly replaced with anxiousness, thanks to the sudden rush of adrenaline now surging through her blood veins.

After few second of rumble, few loud orders and hasty questions that she couldn't hear well enough to know what was going on, one of the steps on the other room were coming louder, almost like someone was walking towards the door of this room. Trying to get the grip over herself, she found herself able to open up her eyes. There was no light at all in the tiny and empty cell, and for seconds, she felt that she was going to pass out even after regaining her awareness of the present.

When the sturdy steps stopped behind the door, her heart was beating heavily, silently crying out for help, and the heavy breaths that she had intended to fill up with words came out of her mouth in silent gasps, her voice completely gone to the place where her mind had almost fallen few seconds ago. When the door finally opened up with a creak, she had to close up her eyes when she felt the weak source of light stabbing her vision that until now had only seen pitch-black darkness.

Squinting her eyes, she tried to have a look of the lone figure that stood on the doorway, searching the area. The figure was dark and steady when the lazy light shone behind him, shading him only slightly with a weak aura that was laid down to his shoulders. When he finally saw her form laying on the floor, all alone as she had been for hours by now, his shoulders shifted when he let out a heavy sigh that sounded astoundingly relieved. Her hazy eyes looked up to him, squinting and still unable to identify him when he walked to her and crouched down next to her form. His glowed hand landed down to her shoulder when he leaned his face in to examine the bruises on her face, and she finally realised who this man was, and that realisation caused her body to shake up softly with deep relief.

"S- Squall…" She finally found her voice back and gasped out his name with a soft whimper; a sound of weakness that in different occasion she would have tried to hide away but now was too tired to even try doing so. Before she could say anything else, he brought his hands around her body and lifted her up into his arms, causing her to flinch in pain. He headed away from the cell and she leaned her head against his shoulder, opening her tired eyes only when she heard the soft whining echoing in the corridor that they then entered into.

Ignoring the physical pain that the action caused her, she glanced towards the blind dog that was being left behind them when he continued with his steady walk. The dog like creature was messy… its ribs were showing and the skin hanged down from those dusty bones. Its head was dropped to the hard ground, mouth half opened and dried from lack of water, and all of its four bony legs were spread against the ground, lifeless and useless. While taking its last aching breathes, the dog's pair of white eyes looked at her deeply, piercing through her mind with amazing strength and suffocating her only with those eyes… with that gaze… She started slowly to drift away from the present, and the last thing that she could hear was the restrained voice of Squall's that offered comfort to her only with the words and not with the tone of voice he held.

"Don't worry, Quistis… We will take you back to the headquarters now…"


End file.
